Chapter Two - The Great Matter
The Misery of Mrs. Geesky. Serial Number 2, The Red Reticule.
BEFORE CHAPTER TWO
Complete mastery of mind ends misery and one attains peace and liberation.
We are saved from all suffering and distress when we surrender to what shows up at our doorstep. We need an undisturbed guardianship of our soul so that we may concentrate and realize the truth and wisdom of our life.
Ask yourself “How do I spend my life?” Peace is always possible in every situation.
Chapter Two
Mrs. Geesky Arrives
There is no yellow tape wrapped around the front of the house to ward off gapers. No pack of neighbors. The street is empty. It is night fall. No sign of alarm. No one can stop what is about to happen.
With the keenness of a prowling cat, Mrs. Geesky parks curbside where she sees the lucid light that cuts through the drawn sheers of Mrs. Walshe’s front bedroom window. The light falls across the porch railing. The air is fresh as she steps out onto the street where no visible sign of force is apparent.
The old clapboard house, in need of repair, once barn red, shelters the old woman. With paint peeling, the house, birth-marked with bare blotches, is a reminder of old age. Mrs. Geesky knows she is expected, and senses being watched. Accustomed to this scene she is surefooted as she approaches the house. She expects to find Mrs. Walshe lying dead or close to it in her double bed behind those drawn drapes.
Day and night, hour after hour, Mrs. Geesky pulled up to this curb to sit by the side of Mrs. Walshe, an old woman in her late 80’s, dying from a cancer called CUP (cancer, unknown primary). With no regret Mrs. Walshe refused treatment against the unspecified malignant imp and opened the door for Mrs. Geesky to come in.
“The treatment,” Mrs. Walshe told the oncologist, “is too, shall I say, chancy making it more perilous than the indeterminate imp itself.” The doctor remained silent and with a cold looming look reminded Mrs. Walshe that the main symptoms of CUP were continuous wasting and unrelenting fatigue.
“You will be able to do very little,” cautioned the doctor.
Which Mrs. Walshe, with her whiskery chin, grinned and repeated back to him, “We all will die doctor. I assure you I want no extraordinary measures.” With her final refusal to go along with the doctor’s wishes, he stood up and told her that she, being an old woman alone should sign up for hospice. And that was the only sensible comment that Mrs. Walsh agreed to follow.
It’s been six weeks.
Many daily functions were workable when Mrs. Geesky first introduced herself to Mrs. Walshe on a morning in late summer. It was a hot, heavy heat that washed over the city in the morning when Mrs. Geesky first arrived. Everything felt moist and sticky.
The alert and cheerful Mrs. Walshe answered her door thinking it might be the chaplain, the one the social worker on her hospice team mentioned. On the other side of the glassed front door stood a woman wearing a wide brimmed straw hat tipped to one side partially concealing a big pair of large, dark sunglasses.
“Good morning, dear.” Greeted Mrs. Walshe. “You must be the chaplain Melissa mentioned?”
Mrs. Geesky grumbled something about who else would I be and then barged through the door brushing past the jovial, but frail Mrs. Walshe.
Mrs. Geesky’s pale colored hair flipped back over her shoulders as she clacked the white heels of her sandals together as if she were going to salute. In a dramatic, unconvincing attempt to lengthen her baby doll dress over her freckled knees she snatched her glasses from her face and turned to face the silent Mrs. Walshe.
Mrs. Walshe, still capable of the basics of hospitality, spoke muffling her surprise, “Oh!” The old woman stepped back out of the way and in her most composed manner added, “Yes. How smart. Come through. It is terribly hot out there.”
For weeks, Mrs. Walshe greeted Mrs. Geesky at the front door with a spirited welcome, each time moving aside making room for the abrupt march across the threshold. The old woman’s cancer remained dormant enough that Mrs. Walshe managed to make cookies and on those odd, off chance days of good strength, she wrapped homemade French fudge in small, white papers.
The house, small and retiring, smelled of fresh coffee which for both women became an accidental ally. They shared little in common except for the upcoming victory of the indeterminate threat. Mrs. Walshe did her best to serve a cup of coffee with a finely made sweet tucked against the cup. It was a prelude to hours of awkward tolerance between them.
The unyielding pairing with Mrs. Geesky worked for Mrs. Walshe. The old woman was amenable to everything. For she was rooted in an uncanny acceptance and trust in a simple truth she followed. Everything that came into her life was meant to be. Mrs. Geesky with her intractable attitude was merely another thing.
The old woman grew used to Mrs. Geesky’s surge through the door headlong with her terrible insistent authority. During these many clumsy, silent hours of tolerance Mrs. Walshe, in an elegant quiet, relied on the facts of her situation.
The truth was clear. “I live alone. I am dying. This woman is part of a package offered to help me.”
Despite her initial surprise that a chaplain might act like an authoritarian commando as Mrs. Geesky did, Mrs. Walshe held a remarkable gratitude for Mrs. Geesky’s faithful attendance. For the past six weeks, Mrs. Geesky’s reliable habit to come every day, sometimes twice a day, once in the morning and once at night counterbalanced her stern approach.
Neither woman knew the truth held by the other.
Mrs. Geesky reassured herself with the fact, “It’s my job.” She’d tell herself and remind her boss in an imperious manner that her frequent contact with Mrs. Walshe was after all “Her job!” She also found herself blurting it out in the silence between herself and Mrs. Walshe, “It is my job!” Mrs. Walshe did not always understand the need to be so haughty but accepted it under the rubric, So it is.
Mrs. Geesky never tried to convince Mrs. Walshe or her boss that it was anything but her job. She never once tried to persuade anyone to think she cared about this old dying woman. Nor did she offer any theological certainties of life after death.
These two women waited together, side by side, in silence for Mrs. Walshe to die. The silence never once signaled that Mrs. Walshe disliked Mrs. Geesky; she was not a woman to draw a judgment for or against anyone. Her silence was a consequence of her dying. The knowledge of her impending death led her to intern more fully into the chambers of grief.
Up until her diagnosis Mrs. Walshe gave little credence to her own death. The deaths of others: her parents, her sister, her brother, her husband gave her little to go on when it came to her own death. Grief came not in the form of her own collapse or the worry for others who might be pulled to grieve for her, but in an unexpected query of what is the worth and meaning of grief. Before confined to her bed she concluded, “Grief and grieving for others does very little to assist me at this time of my own death.” In the slow movement down this runway before takeoff she hoped for a breakthrough and it was with this wishful awareness, silence set in like mortar between brick. It held both women them together.
Mrs. Geesky’s silence, a consequence of her need to watch, allowed her to keep a steady eye on Mrs. Walshe’s decline. The waiting laid on a comfortable eagerness for what she called, ‘the great matter.’ More than less, Mrs. Geesky was a representative for death, not against it. A friend of happiness, a climax that she summarized in four words, “It makes them happier.”
Over the weeks of visitation Mrs. Walshe tired more easily often falling asleep in her recliner chair on her back porch while Mrs. Geesky sat in a static, rigid pose next to her. But there was one night, before Mrs. Walshe became bedridden, when Mrs. Walshe and Mrs. Geesky entered an odd shaped, unanticipated benevolence that crept beyond the confines of their arrangement.
It was just after they had finished coffee when Mrs. Walshe asked Mrs. Geesky to do something for her.
The old woman spoke. “I received,” she said omitting the word unexpected, “a letter from my daughter. She’s about the same age as you, I suspect.”
The hope and desire to talk about the letter led Mrs. Walshe to make such a comparison.
Mrs. Geesky’s skin rippled, an impulse akin to the sensation of a crawling bug. She remained silent as silence had become a habit.
“I don’t want to fall asleep in this chair tonight.” Mrs. Walshe continued. “I want to sit upright. If you’d be so kind as to help me. please push this arm forward…”
Before Mrs. Walshe reached for the wooden arm Mrs. Geesky jumped up and pulled the wooden arm upward as she pushed down against the foot riser. The chair sprang forward making a loud metal clang pitching Mrs. Walshe upright and on the edge of the seat cushion.
Shaken, Mrs. Walshe managed to say, “I left a letter on the table.” Stunned by the hurtling force of the recliner, she raised one finger in the direction of the kitchen table.
Without saying a word Mrs. Geesky rushed away and returned with the letter.
“Thank you, Mrs. Geesky.” Mrs. Walshe said as she recognized a connection, a thread of sympathy, a kinship of familiarity with this strange, unyielding woman.
Mrs. Geesky sat down into her straight chair unaware of any change.
Upright, Mrs. Walshe bent forward on the edge of her seat and waved the envelope that Mrs. Geesky had set in her lap. She, then turned to look straight into the eyes of Mrs. Geesky and made a declaration.
“Despite our age difference, we both know the joys and pitfalls of marriage and children. Do you have any children?”
“I’ve never been married!” It was a caustic reply more like a confession of guilt and blame all in one quick pitch.
Mrs. Walshe didn’t know whether to apologize or pursue an explanation, but decided on the side of prudence and withdrew the question. To calm herself, with the letter in one hand she slid her backside into the rear of the recliner letting the squeaking sounds from the old chair give her only response.
A blunt blow, a strike back only to be forgotten, never repeated. It cracked open a memory long buried in Mrs. Walshe. Her daughter, who lived on the other side of the continent, left seeds of resentment in a similar one, two punch.
In this cold chill from the past, Mrs. Walshe pushed her rough, gnarly fingers under the seal and nipped out the letter with her thick awkward stubs letting the envelope drop to the floor. She unfolded the sheet of paper and read aloud.
“Dear Mother.”
Hearing these words Mrs. Geesky stiffened. Mrs. Walshe spotted her braced shoulders.
“Do you write to your mother?”
“She’s dead.” Mrs. Geesky clamped her teeth together biting down hard on the word dead. With a jerk of her head she demanded, “Read the letter!” Mrs. Walshe, with a trace of hope, complied with her guardian’s impatience.
“Dear Mother.”
“You read that!”
Mrs. Walshe looked at Mrs. Geesky out of the corner of one eye. “Yes. You’re right, dear. I have. I am forgetful and old.”
“No. No. You are not just old. You are dying. That is no excuse.”
Mrs. Walshe swayed forward towards the floor, the chair clunked and squealed. “Yes. Yes, you’re right to correct me. I am dying.”
Mrs. Geesky stood up and reached across the armrest towards Mrs. Walshe’s bent body. With both hands placed on Mrs. Walshe’s shoulder she set the old woman’s frail body back into the arms of the recliner.
Drawing her chin down towards her chest, Mrs. Walshe closed her eyes feeling strangely loved. When she remembered the letter still in her hands on her lap, she opened her eyes, and in an unsteady voice continued to read it.
“I know we have had our differences.” she quavered. “I cannot come. But Julia will come. It’s the best I can do.”
“Did she sign it?”
“Yes. She signed it.”
Mrs. Geesky crouched forward over the lap of Mrs. Walshe to read the signature. “How’d she sign it?”
Mrs. Walshe looked up. The pale brown hair of Mrs. Geesky fell away from her face revealing the trace of a long scar along Mrs. Geesky’s temple. For one small moment Mrs. Walshe wanted to stroke the bare wound but instead held the letter up for Mrs. Geesky to read the signature.
With her forearms resting on one of the arms of the recliner, Mrs. Geesky turned her head into the face of Mrs. Walshe, “Forget her! I am here.”
The corners of Mrs. Walshe’s mouth lifted in a faint gesture of accord. The old woman so wanted to touch the face – to tell her the words were a recompense for years of an unmentionable longing. But she knew the stranger who said these words was somehow uplifted by goodbye so instead she said, “Thank you, dear. Tonight, will be our last coffee together.”
Mrs. Geesky, emboldened by the old woman’s honesty assured Mrs. Walshe in her usual commando style, “Yes. That’s right. I am in charge. Don’t be afraid.”
Birth and death are the great matter.
“How do you spend your life?”
When we see the ups and downs of the material world without doubt or hesitation we realize we have had enough of the material world and seek eternal peace with unshakeable conviction.
Are you able to surrender and accept everything that comes into your life?
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